Illustration: Create A Caricature For A Magazine Cover

Always dreamed of making it big as a rock star and gracing the cover of a glamorous music mag? Today, we’re gonna show you a simple way to create a caricature illustration which can be applied in any artwork. Get ready to rock!

Final Result:

Step 1:

Firstly, open the caricature body you’re going to use and press P to select the Pen Tool as shown to draw a path for the object.

Caricatures are all about funny illustrations of people that exaggerate some of their features. So make sure that you pose with an outlandishly funny face while you’re shooting yourself! After that, applying the same method as above, press P to use the Pen Tool to draw the path of your funny face.

Return to Layer 2 to mask away the extra hair. Press to check on the masked area.

Step 12:

As mentioned, caricatures are essentially exaggerations. Therefore, we’re going to enlarge both hands and legs, using the Pen Tool to draw the path for selection.

Step 13:

While making sure that you’re in Layer 1, hold down Ctrl and Left Click on the Path icon to select the hand. Press Ctrl + C (copy) followed by Ctrl + J to simultaneously create a new layer and paste the selection.

Step 14:

Press Ctrl + T to transform and enlarge the hand.

Step 15:

Click on the Wrap Mode icon to adjust the tiny edges.

Step 16:

Upon completing both hands and legs, the image should look like this.

Step 17:

Click on the eye icon to hide the Background Layer. Select the other layers by holding down Shift and clicking on all the layers except Background.

Step 18:

Click on the menu icon as shown and select Merge Visible to combine all the caricature layers.

Just play around with the Liquify Tool to make your caricature funnier. The red circles are the areas where I made some adjustments.

Step 21:

Press Ctrl + J to generate a copy of Layer 3.

Step 22:

It’s now time to decide on the illustration style! I’ll be using two simple steps to create a painting-like effect. Go to Filter/Artistic/Paint Daubs.

Step 23:

It’s always good to test out any effect’s settings before applying them to the artwork. However, I’m setting this effect to Brush Size 6 and Sharpness 4 as doing so creates more realistic painting-like looks and a better overall result.

Step 24:

Go to Filter/Artistic/Poster Edges to enhance the edges of the character.

Step 25:

Try not to overdo the effect, or the illustration would look very harsh. I’d set it to Edge Thickness: 1, Edge Intensity: 1, Posterization: 3.

Step 26:

For the Background effects, go to Filter/Artistic/Paint Daubs. Set the Brush Size to 7 and Sharpness to 15.

Step 27:

This is how it should look like so far.

Step 28:

If you have a plug-in software called Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0, try to make use of it for color rendering tasks. Personally, I quite enjoy using this software as it’s a very powerful tool for adjusting color effects. The following 4 steps are on using this plug-in software to achieve the color effect I’d desired. Go to Filter/Nik Software/Color Efex Pro 3.0 Complete and select Colorize. Experiment with the Strength and Method settings and determine which combination works out best for your illustration.

Step 29:

Apply some Glamour Glow to the image.

Step 30:

Use High Key to brighten up everything.

Step 31:

Go to Tonal Contrast to tweak the overall contrast.

Step 32:

Add in a logo, a headline as well as a bar code for your magazine.

Step 33:

Finally, adjust and modify any incomplete areas, such as removing the high light from the left portion of the body and adding in some shadows around the arm and edges. You can even throw in a bit of black to make the character’s features deeper and more outstanding.

Step 34:

Ta da! You’re now all set to rock the stage, or at least the cover of your very own Rock & Roll magazine! Hope you had a rocking great time on this tutorial.